The central premise of Dudley Moore’s 1990 film, Crazy People, was as simple as it was radical: what if ads gave warts-and-all assessments of the products they promoted? (Sample ad: "Buy Volvos: They’re boxy, but they’re good.") Now, an art collective has started speculating about what it would look like if the corporations who made such products embedded some inconvenient truth in their logos.
The Paris-based art group Maentis is known for its satirical and sometimes corporate-based visual gags, such as "Google, Are You Serious?" Their latest project continues the tradition, redesigning some familiar logos to make a statement about the brands behind them. Gillette, for instance, is given a flurry of extra L’s in its name to reflect its seeming mandate to cram as many blades as possible into their razors. It’s a keen display of culture-jamming that recalls Jonah Peretti’s Nike "sweatshop" stunt.
Have a look at a some of the logos above.